Oak Swivel Desk Chair with Leather Seat and Castors

Before the office chair became a machine of levers and mesh, it was a piece of furniture and this is what it looked like. The revolving desk chair of the early twentieth century, solid oak, a pierced splat in the back, arms that curve round to meet the sitter's elbows, a leather seat, and underneath, the iron mechanism that let a person swing from ledger to typewriter to window without standing up. Whole careers were sat out in chairs like this, and they were built accordingly.

The frame is oak throughout, a curved top rail flowing down into the arms in one unbroken sweep, the back filled with a shaped and pierced splat, the arms carried on turned supports. The seat is a deep bowl of oak holding a pad of dark green leather, the edge finished in close brass studs, aged to a soft sheen where forearms and seats have polished it for decades.

Below, the iron swivel and tilt mechanism, with its adjusting knob, connects the seat to a cross of four moulded oak legs that splay out and finish in brass castors, the classic four-star base that predates the wheeled office chair by a lifetime.

For the study that has a proper desk and has been making do with an improper chair, the home office that wants one object with a working life behind it, or the writer who believes a chair should have a history before it gets theirs. Sit, swivel and get on with it.